1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a tube for medical instruments and, more particularly, to a tube made of a resin which may suffer from blocking during steam autoclave sterilization such as vinychloride resin or EVA resin, etc. and adapted for providing a fluid connection to a medical device intended to be sterilized by steam autoclave and made of a resin of the same kind as above. Such device can be a blood bag, transfusion bag, blood transfusion set, transfusion set, blood circuit and so forth. The present invention relates also to a medical bag device having the above-described tube.
2. Description of the Prior Art
There are some medical instruments or devices which are not suitable for sterilization by gas. Examples of such medical instruments are blood bags, transfusion bags, blood transfusion sets, transfusion sets, blood circuits and so forth. These medical instruments, therefore, are usually sterilized together with tubes connected thereto by an autoclave sterilization. More specifically, the autoclave sterilization is conducted by placing a multiplicity of medical instruments in a sterilization chamber with the tubes bundled or stacked for easier sterilization, and applying steam of a temperature higher than 121.degree. C. In this autoclave sterilization, a problem arises from the fact that the materials of the medical instruments and the tubes are of a resin of vinylchloride group or ethylene-vinylacetate (EVA) group which resin has a large tendency for blocking. Namely, the medical instruments and the tubes made of such resins are liable to stick to one another due to blocking.
Until now, in order to avoid this problem, it has been necessary to array the medical instruments and tubes in good order in advance to the sterilizing operation, or to take the trouble of separating the sticking instruments and tubes after the sterilization. Such procedures are quite troublesome and require much labor and, hence, there is an increasing demand for a technique which can eliminate the necessity for such operations.